I also think it was faked. Craig was supposed to not say "off" which is why he stumbled when he forgot his line. Dictation missed the word "off" entirely. More likely in the real world it would have tried to make the stutter into a word and heard "off" as well. In addition, it was much faster than real-world dictation processing. Maybe it was real, but a lot of signs pointing toward Apple wanting to ensure that the demo went well.

While the keynote is scripted, I doubt that its done to that level that they would fake it - the timing would have to be too perfect where its clear that there is some flexibility (you saw that with Scott talking about things). Its possible that several things could have been at fault - processing error (due to data swamping) or the system not hearing it due to a mumble from Craig.

Not to mention that dictation is inherently prone to such errors even with common words. Thats why its hard to pull off - there are so many ways for errors to creep in randomly. There are tons of examples where things go awry during a keynote despite Apples best efforts to control things.

While the keynote is scripted, I doubt that its done to that level that they would fake it - the timing would have to be too perfect where its clear that there is some flexibility (you saw that with Scott talking about things). Its possible that several things could have been at fault - processing error (due to data swamping) or the system not hearing it due to a mumble from Craig.

Not to mention that dictation is inherently prone to such errors even with common words. Thats why its hard to pull off - there are so many ways for errors to creep in randomly. There are tons of examples where things go awry during a keynote despite Apples best efforts to control things.

Click to expand...

Seems like it would be easy to just force Siri to return the scripted response regardless of what the input sounds were.

There were several uses of Siri during the demo, and there were no errors of any kind.

Again, trivial for apple to fake, and in their interest to try to overcome the general perception that Siri isn't perfect.

I wouldn't really be surprised if the demo was faked; these things never work properly on-stage as the audio input suffers merry hell with a crowd of people in there. I'm sure it works as demonstrated, whether the demo was actually 'real' is really more of a matter of whether Apple wanted to risk the conditions causing the whole thing to choke like certain other operating system demos have done in the past

Mac OS' voice recognition has always been pretty good, so I doubt the new features will struggle in practise, but as with all voice recognition crowded rooms will do it no favours.

But voice dictation isn't Siri. There's no parsing of the content, and it's probably not doing the recognition in the cloud.

Click to expand...

Speech recognition relies heavily on context and likelihood of expressions, you can't recognize speech word by word individually. And I am sure this is running in the cloud, like in iOS (unfortunately).

I'm sure it was scripted, as was the Game Center face-off with the "Stig" ... I mean, Racer OSX.

I can see why they scripted it, it helps keep things predictable. Unfortunately, when the guy commits a gaffe like this, it would have actually looked better for Apple/Siri for Dictation to pick up the extra word, or a cough, a sneeze, a burp or any sort of mistake... rather than ignore it and clearly show the dictation was staged.

I'm sure it was scripted, as was the Game Center face-off with the "Stig" ... I mean, Racer OSX.

I can see why they scripted it, it helps keep things predictable. Unfortunately, when the guy commits a gaffe like this, it would have actually looked better for Apple/Siri for Dictation to pick up the extra word, or a cough, a sneeze, a burp or any sort of mistake... rather than ignore it and clearly show the dictation was staged.

Click to expand...

I don't think they want dictation to do that - normally you want it to pick up meaningful words that have context with what you are saying. Good voice recognition recognizes your words and filters out stuff you wouldn't want in your documents.

I have no problems believing the tweet was scripted, but I don't think that the demo was totally faked - there are other possibilities and unless we can get testimony from Apple, it's hard to say one way or the other for sure.

Absolutely it was faked! I noticed it immediately. Craig realized his mistake by including the word "off" and, thus, the stumble in his speech. He underlined the fact that it was a mistake by closing the Siri screen with the text VERY quickly. Watch the video over again, it was definitely faked. Apple wouldn't leave a possible Siri hiccup to chance.

Seems like it would be easy to just force Siri to return the scripted response regardless of what the input sounds were.

There were several uses of Siri during the demo, and there were no errors of any kind.

Again, trivial for apple to fake, and in their interest to try to overcome the general perception that Siri isn't perfect.

Click to expand...

Why was this downvoted? Some simple programming on Apple's side could have easily faked this. Just like how Scott explicitly told the audience that he ran a simulator to demo the Turn-By-Turn directions.

Why was this downvoted? Some simple programming on Apple's side could have easily faked this. Just like how Scott explicitly told the audience that he ran a simulator to demo the Turn-By-Turn directions.

Click to expand...

Exactly. This is what happened. It was probably too tempting since they were running scripts to do other stuff. Like the driving but there was something else; I forget what.

MacRumors attracts a broad audience
of both consumers and professionals interested in
the latest technologies and products. We also boast an active community focused on
purchasing decisions and technical aspects of the iPhone, iPod, iPad, and Mac platforms.